UW CSE Capstone Course Videos

We live in a world of computers. Every day, we use computers to find information, communicate, or be entertained. Capstone courses give students an opportunity to explore ways to use computers to make our lives easier. Hear how our students describe some of their capstone course experiences.

In this capstone, the goal is to build software that takes as input the genome sequences of closely related bacteria and automates comparative genomic analyses of these species. These analyses uncover what biological features the species have in common and what makes each of them unique.

The theme of the digital systems design capstone is technology for low-income environments. In this capstone, students investigate how technology can be used to address problems in education and agriculture in the developing world by prototyping substantional projects by mixing hardware, software, and communication components.

The OS capstone offers an indepth exploration of the Windows operating system. An operating system is the interface between hardware and user, and every computer must have one in order to run other programs. Students work in substantial teams to design, implement, and release a software project involving multiple areas. Emphasis is placed on the development process itself, rather than on the product.

This capstone course, entitled "Multi-Robot Systems: Theory and Implementation," covers key topics in multi-robot systems: distributed algorithms, ad-hoc networking, and coordinated motion. The topics are introduced through a series of labs using 12-robot mini-swarms. The main emphasis of the course focuses on distributed algorithm design, and the goal is to understand how to write software for a large number of robots.

"The Raven Deconstructed" is based on the concept of cellular automata and on the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems. An example of this is the famous BOIDS, which is a visual simulation of a flying flock of birds, where each bird follows simple rules independently. The variant of using separate physical agents derives from the field of swarm robotics. The class appropriated the term "poetry slam," or "slam," to refer to our collective behavior in this project. A Slam is a cloud of sound events of related phrases of a poem, in this case "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, as read by James Earl Jones. The choices and the phrases derive from the execution of a set of common rules, without the intervention of any central control. Therefore, the resultant effect is classed as of Emergent Behavior.

The theme for the course was "Technology for Low-Income Regions." In the fall quarter seminar students used a set of readings to familiarize themselves with several interesting problem domains. By the end of the quarter, they had determined some possible project ideas. Then during spring quarter, they developed and refined those ideas into detailed implementation plans for the spring quarter (the CSE477 CompE capstone design course).

This capstone featured a set of team projects based on UrbanSim (www.urbansim.org), a system for simulating the development of urban areas over periods of 20-30 years. UrbanSim's purpose is to help inform public decision-making about major transportation and land use decisions, such as expanding a light rail system or a freeway, or rezoning to encourage the redevelopment of part of the city. Many of the projects were done by teams consisting of both CSE undergraduates, and graduate students in a companion class in urban modeling.